Translation: It would make a bomb squad weep

On Facebook this week, a friend and former colleague reported that she was awaiting the delivery of an item that, according to its description, "Ships in Certified Frustration-Free Packaging."

Obviously a mistake -- it only felt like 104 years

Julie M. Mah, a sharp-eyed copy editor for The Wichita Eagle, was editing an AP story about the death of "Eight Is Enough" star Dick Van Patten when she came to this sentence:

"The ABC comedy-drama aired from 1877-1981."

Yo, Hayley: Let's get together and compare gray hairs

Today marks the 54th anniversary of the release of the original version of “The Parent Trap,” starring Hayley Mills.

I found this out a few hours ago and would have written about it sooner if I had been able to do so, but you might say that I was indisposed. You might also say that the next time I go through my medicine cabinet I should make sure that the expiration date on my bottle of smelling salts is reasonably well within the current century.

As you might have gathered by now, the 1961 version of “The Parent Trap” has a special significance for me. For it marks the first time that I fell in love – or whatever passes for love when you’re 6 going on 7.

For quite some time I was fascinated by Hayley Mills, and I’m not ashamed to own up to that. And I hasten to point out that I wasn’t an obsessive fan – I didn’t keep a scrapbook, cut out pictures of her, or anything borderline creepy.

Then again, I did put my life on the line for dear Hayley. There was a song from the movie, “Let’s Get Together,” sung by the two identical Hayleys, and yes, I had the record, and yes, I played it a lot. Probably too much. More than probably too much.

Nowadays, despite my erstwhile affection for Hayley, I doubt I could stand to listen to more than a couple of bars of the thing. And when I say that I put my life on the line, I mean that no jury in the world would have jailed my parents for breaking the record – and the record player – over my silly little head. (And if a migraine-inducing arrangement isn't a mitigating factor, what is?)

Not that I blame Hayley for any of this. She was merely a marketing tool. And over the years I have retained a fond memory of her, even though we have both moved on. (Well, at least I have. I can’t speak for her. Well OK, in this case I probably can.)

And no, I have never seen, nor do I ever intend to see, the Lindsay Lohan version.

Who's the plaintiff.... What's the defendant....

Two guys enter the stage from opposite sides. One of them is carrying a suitcase.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m taking my case to court!”

Later, the same two guys again enter the stage, again from opposite ends. The guy who was carrying the suitcase is now carrying a ladder.

“Where are you going now?”

“I’m taking my case to a higher court!”

I was reminded of this old routine when I read the other day that the heirs of Abbott and Costello have filed a lawsuit against the producers of a Broadway play because it includes part of Bud and Lou’s most famous routine, Who’s on First? The play, “Hand to God,” was nominated for five Tonys.

I like Abbott and Costello in short doses. If I do sit through one of their features, I mainly bide my time until I come to the parts where they do a classic routine. (If you look at most of their Universal features, you’ll usually find John Grant's name among the writing credits; he had an encyclopedic memory for burlesque and vaudeville routines, and it was his job to work them into the scripts.)

Bud and Lou deserve a lot of credit for preserving these old routines, both in their movies but especially in their TV show – The Lemon Table, Pack and Unpack, The Mustard Routine, Niagara Falls and, last but certainly not least, Flugel Street – in addition to Who’s on First?

Thing is, from what I’ve read and heard over the years, these routines didn’t begin with Bud and Lou. The two of them reportedly weren’t even the first to do “Who’s on First?”

“The lawsuit is baseless; the material in question is in the public domain, and the show’s producer carefully vetted” it with the show’s lawyers, a spokesman for the production told The New York Times.

I’m no lawyer, let alone a copyright lawyer, but I do know that it’s possible for material that was in the public domain to be copyrighted again – I’m particularly thinking of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which for years was out of copyright and mainly available in crappy VHS and DVD versions that had been duped so often that when you watched them on TV you could almost see right through them to the back of your TV, your living-room wall and the house next door.

So I suppose it’s possible that the heirs could have had “Who’s on First?” copyrighted.

And I don’t mean to seem unsympathetic to the Abbott and Costello estates. I’ve often thought that when Abbott, in his later years, ran into serious tax troubles, the government should have given him a break, considering that during World War II, Bud and Lou raised millions (as much as $85 million, some sources say) for the war effort.

But as far as the current lawsuit is concerned, I can’t help thinking that their descendants may well be out of luck.

Or as Chief Brody from “Jaws” might tell them:

“You’re gonna need a bigger ladder!”

Betsy Palmer

Part of me is annoyed that many people probably remember her only as the killer in the “Friday the 13th” movie.

Then again, I suppose that if it weren’t for that slasher film, the same people wouldn’t know of her at all.

And like so many of her contemporaries, she deserves to be remembered.

I am of that generation that mainly thinks of her as one of the four panelists on “I’ve Got a Secret,” the others being Bill Cullen, Henry Morgan and Bess Myerson. And Ms. Myerson herself died last year. (I sadly remember editing many stories about her during my time on the wire desk during the 1980s. She was embroiled – as journalists like to say – in a scandal in New York City that was called “The Bess Mess.” Memo to celebs: If you want to avoid being ensnarled in a catchy phrase like “The Bess Mess,” get yourself embroiled in some other community that is far, far from Manhattan’s creative scribes – another word journalists like to use.)

I should add that before I started watching the show, the original panelists included Jayne Meadows and Faye Emerson. I’ve seen kinescopes of some of those shows, though, and Ms. Emerson often annoys me for some reason. Maybe it’s because she sometimes seems to come across as a know-it-all who is at best a know-it-some.

And I remember how, during a visit to my hometown many moons ago, Ms. Emerson very much annoyed the manager of the local summer playhouse when she insisted that he turn off the air-conditioning system during her play. To the surprise of absolutely no one who knew this producer (who many years later got away with not paying for a tetanus shot after my sister, working as an unpaid apprentice, stepped on a nail) easily prevailed.

I should also note the recent passing of Ms. Meadows, whom I did find to be charming, savvy and intelligent, even if she did sometimes seem overly appreciative of whatever her husband, Steve Allen, happened to be saying or doing. (Can't help wondering if whoever performed their marriage ceremony concluded it by saying "I now pronounce you man and laugh track.")

Betsy Palmer had a telegenic sweetness that was perfect for television, and a friend of mine who interviewed her for his radio show says that what you saw was what she was.

Yet there was a certain, infrequent slyness about her on-air naivete. She would once in a while, and seemingly inadvertently, say something that was a little risqué, apparently not realizing exactly what she had said, but I think I knew what she was doing all the time, and because she didn’t do it often, and because she wasn’t annoying about this sort of thing (memo to Carol Channing and Charo: Yes, I do mean you), I was apt to look the other way.

A few days ago I watched a segment of “I’ve Got a Secret” that involved three women. As she was questioning them on live TV, Betsy Palmer’s zipper broke, and Cullen and Morgan rushed to her aid.

This could have happened to any woman on live TV.

But what made Betsy Palmer unique was that as this on-air embarrassment was playing itself out, she thought it necessary to apologize to the three women.

That shows a genuineness, and a class, that I fear we don’t find often these days, and not just on TV.

As Letterman takes his leave

During the 1970s I sometimes watched a syndicated game show called “Liars Club.” It featured a panel of four celebrities who would be given an unusual object and asked to explain what it was. Then three contestants would have to decide which of the four was telling the truth.

One day I missed the beginning of the show, so I had no idea who one of the panelists was. The other three were familiar: Larry Hovis (formerly of “Hogan’s Heroes”), possibly Betty White (whose husband, Allen Ludden, was hosting) and someone else whom I can’t remember but certainly recognized at the time.

But the fourth panelist was a young guy I’d never seen before. But though I didn’t know him, I did know right off the bat that he was almost effortlessly hilarious.

I listened carefully so I could catch his name. Eventually someone (probably Ludden) said it:

David Letterman.

Some time later I saw this guy again. This time he was on Tom Snyder’s “Tomorrow” show along with two other people, one of whom was a young woman who seemed to agree that David Letterman was hilarious.

Merrill Markoe.

Of course I had no way of knowing that I was witnessing the start of a career that would prove to be almost as legendary as Johnny Carson’s. But if you had told me then that more than 30 years later David Letterman would be retiring at the top of his profession, I wouldn’t have stared at you in disbelief.

Because even back then, the guy had it.

Not too long after the “Tomorrow” appearance, Letterman, abetted by Markoe, hosted a live but short-lived daytime talk show on NBC. It aired in the late morning and included a brief newscast by Edwin Newman, who’d been doing a newscast during that time period for some time. Thing is, Newman’s newscast had followed one of the shows Letterman was replacing, and Newman had done it from a separate studio.

Now Newman was on stage with Letterman, and when Letterman introduced the newscast, the audience applauded -- something Newman wasn’t ready for (no one ever gave Walter Cronkite, the Most Trusted Man in America, an ovation), but he soldiered on with his customary deadpan grace.

I think I caught a number of Letterman’s morning shows – I worked nights and was usually up in the late morning – so I was able to witness the beginnings of the type of anti-conformist humor that Letterman would become more famous for at a later hour.

As much as I liked Letterman, I didn’t see his late-night shows often because I was usually working and didn’t care enough to tape him. But I knew he was there and knew that I could count on him to be funny if I happened to have a night off or get home early.

Of course, one problem with watching a performer’s career evolve over the years is that you evolve, too – or, to put it more plainly, you get older, too.

So that when Letterman, in response to critics who chide him for no longer doing the remote bits that he specialized in years ago, says he’s older and too tired, you almost identify with him. I suppose there are many people in their sixties who can say with no trace of a doubt that they could still do the things they did 30 years ago as well as they did them then.

I am not one of those people.

This doesn’t mean I’m willing to give Dave an unlimited pass. Having watched him more often during the last eight years now that I’m no longer in the newspaper business, I’ve been irritated by his habit of repeating (and maybe re-repeating) jokes from the night before or from several nights before. To be fair, I don’t think he’s done this lately, but I do know I could do without his penchant for making jokes that mean nothing to me at home but get whoops from the audience because they refer to someone whom Dave interacted with during the warm-up.

I won’t go so far as to say that Dave has ever phoned it in, but there have been times when his finger has hovered dangerously close to the keypad.

There’s been a lot of speculation as to whether Letterman will ever return to TV, or whether he’ll just disappear like his idol, Carson.

And it’s also been pointed out that Carson never intended to quit completely, but just never found anything else he wanted to do. (And in its own way, I think that doing nothing was, paradoxically, a brilliant career move for Carson. When I heard that he had died, one of my first thoughts was that it would no longer be possible to hope that someday, maybe, just maybe, he’d resurface somewhere, however briefly, and be just as funny. For although he had left us laughing, it was always hard for me to accept that Johnny Carson had really left.)

I’d like to think that Letterman will return in a format that suits both him and the audience – maybe something quick and easy once in a while. Something like Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”

And as sorry as I am to see Letterman go, in a way I’m looking forward to his last show. For although he is a comedian, Letterman, like Carson, is fundamentally a broadcaster -- his powerful remarks after 9/11 prove that – and I’m sure he’ll go out with his idol’s same type of Midwestern style, with at least a few grace notes thrown in.

Fun at the puzzle tournament

(SPOILER ALERT: If you are among the solvers who will be doing this year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament puzzles by mail, you shouldn’t read this now.)

I didn’t ask for the change of venue, but now that the proceedings are over, I have no plans to appeal.

I began competing in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in 2008, the first year it was held in Brooklyn. It had moved there from Stamford, Connecticut, where it had always been held, after a documentary about the event caused attendance to zoom so much that the event outgrew the hotel.

Last year, with attendance leveling off, tournament officials announced that the event would be moved back to Stamford. This meant that instead of a simple plane ride to JFK or LaGuardia and a cab to Brooklyn, I’d have to take a train to Manhattan, then catch a commuter train to Stamford.

But I was pleasantly surprised by how well things went. True, the Amtrak ride was a long one, but I didn’t have to go through all the fun stuff you have to do just to get to the gate – just get on, show your ticket to the conductor and settle back. Perhaps it helped that my maternal grandfather, whom I never met, was a railroad worker, and I remember my uncle telling me that he, my aunt and my mother had train passes until they were 21.

So the move back to Stamford was a good idea.

But you didn’t come hear to here about my travel travails, so on to the puzzles….

As always, the first puzzle on this Saturday is an easy warm-up: “Whom Not to Invite to the Party,” by Tracy Bennett. It has an asymmetrical grid, in the middle of which black spaces are arranged to form a frowning face.

I do well on this, though as in past years I maybe take a little too much time checking my answers as I work toward my eventual goal of beating my ranking from last year – 164, down from my best showing, 142.

Puzzle 2 is supposed to be the second most difficult, but I’m able to spot the theme right away. Joel Fagliano’s “Tearing the World Apart” splits the names of continents across several horizontal lines – so you find, for example, EURydice and antiPOPE. I seem to make fairly good time on this.

Continuing the geographical motif, Puzzle 3, by Merl Reagle, is “Our Expanding Cities.” Having done many of Reagle’s Sunday puzzles in my local paper, I’m ready for his brand of pleasingly outlandish wordplay, which includes this clue: “City that’s out of touch with the other cities in this puzzle?” Answer: DISCHENECTADY.

After the lunch break, I’m feeling pretty good, figuring I’ve nailed all three puzzles.

Then I make the mistake of asking the nice lady next to me to check my scores on her phone.

My score for Puzzle 2 is much lower than it should be.

The scans for Puzzle 2 are already online, and when she called mine up on her screen I see my error: For “River of central Germany” I have ODER instead of EDER. Because of this mistake, I miss out on more than 200 points.

So as I go into Puzzle 4, I have to work a bit to maintain my concentration and not let my ODER stink up any chances for improving my score. Fortunately, Paula Gamache’s “Odes” is fairly easy (“Ph.D. candidate’s ode?” TO A HIGHER DEGREE”), and I nail it.

Next comes the dreaded Puzzle 5, often referred to as “the bastard puzzle,” which is supposed to be the trickiest of the seven puzzles that everyone does. This year it is “Attention, Newbies!” by Jeff Chen.

Over the years I have decided that the way to handle Puzzle 5 is not to get too intimidated -- just fill in as many clues as you can and hope the theme will become clear. In this case, it takes quite a while, especially because during the first five minutes of this 30-minute puzzle I’m unable to make much of a dent in it.

But as usual in crossword land, persistence pays off, and I eventually get what’s going on: In the theme answers, one or two Bs have been added, so that the answer to “Rebounds” is not CAROMS but CAR BOMBS. (New Bs – get it?)

Maybe with 10 minutes more I might have nailed this puzzle, but as it stands I finished more of it than most of the contestants (as usual with Puzzle 5, few seemed to finish it).

Puzzle 6, the last puzzle of the day, is “Company Turnarounds” by Lynn Lempel, who does a lot of the easy Monday New York Times puzzles. (“Jewel to wear on Election Day?” TUESDAY RUBY.) I do a perfect job on this.

On Sunday morning, as I head downstairs to do Puzzle 7, my score is in the upper 150s, an improvement over last year, though not by much, though Puzzle 7 is the biggest one in terms of clues and is given the most time – 45 minutes. So if I can nail all the clues and finish well ahead of time, I have a very good chance at scoring mucho points.

On the elevator with me as I head down are several guys, one of whom is instantly familiar: Jason Keller, a former Jeopardy! champ, who is competing in the tournament. Over the years I’ve also seen a couple of other champs from the show competing. Monetarily, this seems odd; the tournament’s top prize is $5,000, which is chicken feed to any Jeopardy! champ who is good enough to make the show’s annual Tournament of Champions, as all three of these guys have done. The only thing I can figure is that to them, the crossword competition is just another Everest.

As I get ready for Puzzle 7, the seat next to me is taken by someone I’ve seen at most of the other tournaments: mystery writer Parnell Hall.

If you’ve never read any of his stuff, you should look him up. He writes mystery novels that are both cleverly plotted and funny. If you think that’s easy, try it sometime – chances are that you’ll decide to take up a less perilous pastime, like juggling chain saws.

One of Mr. Hall’s series stars a woman who is famous for making crossword puzzles -- – which are really constructed by her niece – and for solving murders. He and I have a chat about the mystery business, and like most of the mystery writers I’ve met since I began to sell some of my stuff, he’s very nice and treats me as a fellow professional, though I’m sure not yet at the point where I deserve that title.

Our conversation is so enjoyable that I almost forget I’m there to do a puzzle, in this case “I’d Sooner Spooner” by the often tricky Patrick Berry. I know I’m in my element, because I know that a spoonerism is a familiar phrase in which a couple of beginning letters have been switched, so that “Merchandise at an Indian grocery?” is CURRIES AND WARES (instead of Worries and Cares).

We have 45 minutes to do this big puzzle, and I’m finished with 26 minutes left on the clock, with the grid filled in perfectly.

The last puzzle, by Byron Walden, is done only by the finalists, a group that – surprise! – doesn’t include me. The big showdown involves (in alphabetical order) Howard Barkin, Dan Feyer and Tyler Hinman, and this finish is about as exciting as you can get, and you can see it here.

As for me, I finish in 154th place out of about 560 – an acceptable improvement over last year, but were it not for the ODER/EDER screw-up, I probably would have been 133rd.

But there’s always next year’s tournament, which begins on April Fools’ Day.

Sure hope that’s not an omen.